He Did It!

Adam passed his trade and business management tests for his Nevada roofing license on Saturday. We already have the application turned into them so we just have a few more things that need to be done and we will be set to do roofing projects in Nevada. On another good news note, we found out on Friday that we are all set with our Arizona license, so that was exciting news for us as well. To finish off recording about the rest of our week's adventures the boys and I met up with Wynn and Phyllis at Smith's Mesa on Wednesday and finished helping plant tomatoes, corn, and some zuccini. It took us a little longer to get up there than I had planned as I ended up making a lunch that we all shared and enjoyed up there. I snapped a few pictures of these hard working boys. Tyson and Lincoln thoroughly enjoyed packing water in little buckets for grandma and grandpa. Wynn had a good little system rigged up for getting the water out of the tank in the back of his truck since you have to haul it up there in order to water. On Friday the boys and I walked over to the church to help with the cleaning and then we went out the flat that afternoon and I cleaned up the floor of the meat shop so that it would be closer to being ready to put the sealant down. It was a hot day to be out there working but I didn't mind it too much and Gage came to help by picking up the nails with the magnet. At around 6 p.m. I went to the church farm and participated in our stake's peach thinning assignment. Since Adam was in Vegas for most of the week then I had to keep us busy with things to do. On Saturday we watched Stuart and Heidi's kids, which Tyson and Lincoln enjoyed having them here. We drove into Hurricane to Snokaps and enjoyed that treat at a picnic table under a shade tree in the heat of the day. Lincoln went to a birthday party for a little girl from his nursery class and wowed everyone with his dance moves and his conducting ability while singing the Happy Birthday song. He is quite the entertainer. After that we all went out to the flat to kill our pig, skin it, and get it in the freezer (Well, Adam, Ben, and Daniel did all of that and I'll spare us all pictures of it).

When You Put Others First

I definitely have some backdating posts to do to catch up on some events that are worth documenting, however I always want to start with the most current and then do some back logging when the guilt becomes too much to put aside. This picture was taken back in April, but I haven't had a chance to post any for a while and really love these three boys in my life and couldn't resist.

This post is actually being driven from the Sunday School class I was in while visiting my inlaws' ward today for my sister-in-law Crystel's farewell (she's leaving for the Los Angeles spanish speaking Visitor's Center Mission). Toward the end of the class, which the lesson was on family history and temple work, Stuart shared a recent story that involved Wynn and his cows. A comment was made about how it was hoped that Wynn wrote in his journal about what happened as it would be a great testimony for his grand-children about doing temple work and the blessings that come. I thought that I didn't know if Wynn kept a journal and another comment was made about how sometimes people do not or cannot keep a record of their life, however if we have the opportunity to write things down for others we should. I committed myself right then that I was going to sit down this evening and document for Wynn but especially for his posterity this faith promoting incident that occurred last week.

Wynn and Phyllis usually attend the temple on Thursdays, however if you are the owner of cows then they don't always work into your schedule, except for Wynn this time. He had gone up to Smiths Mesa the day before and left some hay in the corral for the cows as the land up there was quite dead and dry. He hadn't seen the cows for most of the summer and fall and was starting to think that he might of lost them for good. On Thursday he was quite tempted to head back up to Smiths to see if he got lucky having any show up and possibly corral them. He decided against it and him and Phyllis headed to the temple. Friday morning Wynn, Adam, Tyson, and Lincoln bundled up and went up to Smiths to check on the status of the cows and to their amazement and wonder found all of the cows, including 3 calves that were born during their stay up there, all in the corral with the gate shut and locked. Prudencio (sp?), the name of the guy Wynn did the temple work for the day before is who came to his mind. He just knew that because he put doing the work of the Lord first, particularly Prudencio's work, then some help was kicked back his way. Wynn walked away that day with one less day of having to cuss the cows out (actually I could be wrong because they went up to check on the cows obviously not knowing what they were going to find because they had to come down and get the horse trailer and go back up and get them, so I don't know how herding them into the trailer went. All Tyson could talk about when he got home and at dinner was how, "we got the cows in the trailer and dad said, 'we got em Tyse, we got em'" Adam thought it was funny the things that Tyson retains in his memory from the experience. All Tyson could do was just repeat to me over and over what happened and what Adam said.

A quote was shared from a classmember today that went very much along with Wynn's experience. Elder David B. Haight quoted John A Widtsoe who wrote : “I believe that the busy person on the farm, in the shop, in the office, or in the household, who has his worries and troubles, can solve his problems better and more quickly in the house of the Lord than anywhere else. If he will … [do] the temple work for himself and for his dead, he will confer a mighty blessing upon those who have gone before, and … a blessing will come to him, for at the most unexpected moments, in or out of the temple will come to him, as a revelation, the solution of the problems that vex his life. That is the gift that comes to those who enter the temple properly.” (“Temples and Work Therein,” Ensign, Nov 1990, 61) I had to chuckle as Wynn's cows quite often are "problems that vex his life".

"Grandpa Won't Help Grandma"

I don't have a picture to post with this yet, but I did want to document some pretty funny phrases that Tyson shared in observation of a few things. First, I watched my neighbor's boy, Tate, this morning until 2:30 this afternoon and spent most of that time at the Flat as I had arranged with my mother-in-law to help her clean out and defrost her deep freezer on the deck. She needed to do it, but needed some support and push to do it and after she was so kind to pretty much end up bottling a bunch of peaches for me two days ago while I had my phone strapped to my ear all day and wasn't much help, I felt like putting a good part of the day aside devoted to very worthy cause. She unplugged the freezer last night so it would thaw out and everything worked out great except for........the blasted cows! Be glad I don't use my father-in-law's words to describe them :) Anyways Phyllis (MIL) said she needed to go help Wynn get the cows in and so I continued to work to put the somewhat frozen items back neatly in the freezer when Tyson came up to me and said, "Mom, grandma's trying to get the cows and grandpa's not helping her. We need to go help her." I assured him that grandpa was probably getting something or finishing something up before going to get the cows. I yelled out to Phyllis to see if I needed to locate a 4 wheeler to help round them up as it didn't look from the deckside view that it was going very well. There was one 4 wheeler that was a possibility but I could not find the key so I headed out to see what I could do to help. We were running around and trying to circle them together and as Phyllis and I had a majority of them cornered, Wynn was tromping off into the field cussing away at the stray cow. I thought that cow better hope that Wynn doesn't catch him or he'll have wished he had stayed on the other side of the fence. Wynn got that cow back over by us by way of chucking rocks and dirt clods at them. We closed in on them and managed to get all but one in. The same dumb cow that Wynn had cussed out headed would not go in and managed to get by our cornering and took off across the road into the watermelon patch. Phyllis was saying to leave him, that he's not worth it, but I volunteered to run out into the patch through the high weeds and steer him around towards the fence line. I chucked a few dirt clods at him as well and we managed to get him in and head back to our reloading of the freezer task. As the last cow went in Tyson said, "Good Job!" I looked back and with his beat red face, and hands loaded with dirt clods he had a look of satisfaction and 'We showed those cows who's boss' expression on his face. At one point in the confusion of gathering the cows up Tyson was standing with a cow on either side of him as he had focused at yelling at the one in front of him and not paying attention to what was behind him and an instant look of fright and terror came over him as he noticed the position he was in. Grandma Phyllis yelled for him and after registering in his mind that he could run to her, he quickly did. He's growing up so fast and quite the helper to grandpa on the farm. He wandered down to the shop to help grandpa with the bailer without telling me where he had gone and he just always wants to be helping grandpa out with whatever farm tasks and chores he has to do, no matter how hot it is outside. After Tate went home I told Tyson I needed to go to the restroom and after getting sidetracked on a few things and then heading to my bathroom I found him at my toilet. I told him that I needed to use the toilet and he needed to go to his bathroom to go potty. He quickly informed me that, "Daddy said I could use this bathroom and that you need to share." I said that is fine, but right now I will use my bathroom and if he wanted to wait he could use it after me, otherwise go to his bathroom down the hall. It was a little bit of a shock to have him pull the sharing bit on me with my toilet, which I don't like to share.

Mid-February Recap

It hasn't been as exciting of a weekend as originally hoped for as Tyson has come down with something causing him to have high fever spells and then of course setting off his asthma again, so today we are on day 4 and if he wakes up tomorrow not showing any signs of our happy little boy then I’ll probably take him to his pediatrician. We sure do feel bad for him as he looks so unhappy and miserable. Yesterday was Adam’s cousin Bryce’s farewell, so we did attend that meeting and spent the rest of the day at Adam’s parents’ house. Even though Tyson had awakened that morning acting like his normal self, he ran another high fever this afternoon and spent the rest of the day in our arms. We enjoyed visiting everyone that was visiting for the weekend, but do wish that Tyson had been feeling better to enjoy it as well. Last week the only thing we did out of the ordinary was Adam and I actually going on a date for Valentine’s Day. Adam’s brother Stuart and his wife Heidi got a group of 23 people together to attend the Leahy concert. They are a family of 11 children from Canada that perform Irish music and dancing and Stuart just loves hearing their music and watching the lead brother perform a very fast playing on the violin. My cousin Caleb and his wife Stephanie were so kind to watch Tyson for us as he enjoys playing with their little girl Tyler (aka Tippy), ready for bed and sharing toys in the picture. We watched Tippy the night before while they went out to dinner, so it was a good trade off. We have enjoyed having them here from their recent move for Caleb to start his job at Diamond Valley Ranch. They have been over to our house every night of the week watching basketball games and visiting, which we have enjoyed their company. One of these pictures is from this last week when I took Tyson out to visit Gpa & Gma Stout for a bit, just to get out of the house. We loaded up our pig food bucket that we keep out in the garage and Tyson delivered it to Gma. He helped her pour it into their buckets and then after a little while decided that it was time for Gpa to go feed the piggies, so just as Wynn was finishing his late lunch and early dinner, as he had been pruning trees all morning, Tyson went over and began tugging at his pant leg and trying to push him out of his chair. Gpa would try to stall by telling Tyson that he needed to help Gma put some greens in the pig bucket and then some milk. After doing each of those he was right back at Gpa pestering him to go and so they did. I followed Tyson down which was good since he tried to get in the pen with the piggies and had found himself face planted from not picking his feet up over rocks. He handed Gpa bags of bread that he tore open for the pigs and cows and went with Gpa to collect the eggs, only cracking a couple of them. After returning back to the house he helped Gma transfer the eggs from the bucket to the carton and had tried to hide one behind his back only to find it had cracked. He’s definitely meant for the farm. This last Thursday morning I had my glucose test. I originally had it at the first of the week but rescheduled since I had some sweets on Sunday and new I would fail the test and have to take it again as that is what had happened with Tyson. I past the test which was great and even had another ultrasound done as my doctor wanted to check something out that he had seen on my first ultrasound. Everything was fine, but I’m glad he doesn’t just blow stuff off. He did inform me that if I was dialated a week before the due date that I did have the option to be induced. This all came before I even had a chance to ask him if a baby’s head grows a significant amount from the second to the last week to the last week, at which he said yes and told me that this baby already looks to have a big head, to which I said “Great!” That early inducement option was sounding good at that point. I asked Adam if he wanted to have a little boy on his birthday and he said, “sure, why not, then we’ll have a reason to celebrate.” We’ll see what we decide as it gets closer, but it is less than 2 months away.

Sunday Pig Feeding

Today went well aside from being a little stressed to wrap up my lesson for MiaMaids. I hadn't felt very good all weekend making it difficult to focus on preparing, so I will admit that I went home 2nd hour to finish up after attending sacrament meeting. That really helped me to be in the right mind frame for the lesson. The lesson was about the cycle of Testimony and Obedience. As we are Obedient our testimony grows/strengthens and as that happens then we are more obedient. There was great class participation and I enjoyed hearing from the girls. After church we ate and then headed out to the flat to visit. Shortly after we arrived there G-pa Stout was going out to feed the piggies, which they had recently purchased. He took Tyson with him and I went down to snap a picture. It was fun to sit out there and visit. Shelley and Cody came and Mark and Bonnie were there as well.